Subscription Book #1 (April weeks 1-2) Chapter 5

Chapter 5 Out of the Trash into the Fire

Scythe’s triple sickle rendered the soft flabby flesh of the impotent sovereign guards that dare oppose the might of the Arsenal Terror Syndicate his triple bladed sickle had just wrenched the guts out of a screaming bearded guardsman in his police armor which incarnum endowed mage-circuitry made him stronger and faster and gave him the abilities of the latest mage-technologies. As Scythe looked down at the helpless man his abdomen being pierced by three giant blades nearly severing the guard in half; he wondered whether all of this mage-tech helped the sovereign dog save his own life. He thought not.
The battle raged all around him as the Arsenal terrorists fought with melee weapons, incarnum rifles, and magic itself against the weak and pathetic Sovereign guardsmen. They screamed and hollered and cried out in pain and death, Scythe sliced through the abdomen of an approaching guard wielding an incarnum-endowed sword blazing in green magical fire. He cut the man in two from the belly and warm blood splattered everywhere from the gashing guts that had been severed from the torso of the fool of a man. Scythe caught another incarnum sword in the staff of his sickle and quickly sliced the man to his death.
Blasts of magical Incarnum from rifles and pistols shoot the air with a “Quap Quap” sound and electrified the air with green magical lightning bolts. The Battle was nearing the end with the Arsenal terrorist prevailing and the Sovereign guards dying. There was a few more shots fired and then victory was theirs. The Terrorists hooped and hollered in the blood bath they had unleashed killing more than fifty Guardsmen in the battle. The guards always feel to the ruthless tactics of the Arsenal elite, they were all dead. Everything was as it should be Scythe smiled.
Scythe then turned his attention to the reason why the Sovereign guards had been dispatched to this museum in the first place. It was not because of Arsenal itself but because of some other anonymous tip that went through the underworld and the shady information brokers that told them that there was going to be some kind of heist on the museum and the statue that held the philosophers sword shard. The Sovereign guards and the terrorists meeting had been ironically coincidental; there was something else behind all of this as if it were the work fate itself.
Scythe guessed by his intuition that whoever had been sent to retrieve the shard had been betrayed by their employer and set up to receive an unfortunate bounty of Sovereign Guards to catch them in the act. The lone surviving mercenary Scythe sensed with his magical sight had escaped the Lycran Prince (who was also ironically fated to be here at this moment after the same piece of artifact) and had fallen into a trash ship and was now escaping the city. It was too coincidental too much driven by chance, “The Fate of the Sword is at last awakening...” Scythe mused under his breath
The shards of the Philosophers sword had always been elusive they all seemed to have a mind of their own the dark power leaving and abandoning the user at any moment it felled like it had an opportunity to rejoin with other pieces of the sword. The sword was alive and it had only one mission one sole objective: to join with other fragments of the sword of the Lycran god of fire. The sword fragments choose their own master and for the betterment but usually the worse of a long dead curse of the living sword that feed on living souls.
The Philosophers sword was one of the most ancient and powerful relics on the face of the earth one small inch-length shard of the sword could increase magical power by tenfold making a dark sorcerer exponentially more powerful with each shard of the sword he possessed. The sword was an abomination an evil artifact that once possessed starts to eat away at your very soul until you are empty inside and become like a wandering wraith killing and killing again to feed yours and the swords insatiable lust for mortal souls.
Scythe looked out as the trash ship took away whom ever had wrestled the sword shard from the pathetic excuse for a Lycran Prince; he did not even know who or what he was dealing with. If the mysterious man who now bore the dark curse of the sword had any idea what Red-Moon and Scythe were capable of; he would just have to kill himself now and save them the trouble. Scythe sensed through his magic that the sword shard and who ever carried it were heading out of the Xion mega-complex. If he was not dead he soon would be.
Who ever he was alive or dead he certainly had guts, he fought without a chance of even scratching the Lycran armor let alone actually defeating him in single combat, yet he bested him; he used his wiles and his fool-hardy wit to get him through the battle. The Mercenary almost reminded him of Vash the Sabre with his crafty fighting style and his no hold bars approach to existence. But that was impossible Scythe reminded himself, Vash was dead, Scythe had watched him die. It was a pity though; he would have made a brilliant ally to rule the syndicate at his side.
Scythe looked at the section of his men that were still alive hovering over their fallen comrades and the dead and dying of the Sovereign guard. They had one a not surprising victory over the guardsmen. They were weak and the Arsenal was not. He smiled an evil grin at them and they seemed to both bask in his wickedness and be repulsed by the fear it entailed. He spoke soft yet dark words that cut into their souls, “The shard has left the city complex we must find it at all costs and kill the one who is its keeper…”
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Vash awoke with a cascading pain over his entire body from the steep fall he took into something relatively soft. He felt around himself it would have appeared his fall was broken by a thick layer of soft cardboard trash and other debris that had probably saved his life this day. He felt around for the statue and it was safe and whole. But No! Vash thought suddenly the metal fragment the statue was holding had broken off of the illuminate ever shapeshifting color of the stone moon god. Not good, Vash thought.
As the mercenary looked around the tall cylinder of one of the refuse bin of the trash ship he felt aches and pains he didn’t even know he had even though the soft garbage had broken his fall and kept him alive Vash knew he had fallen at least twenty stories from the window of the museum skyscraper. He groaned and though he had broken a few ribs while moving from his back to his side stiff as an iron servitor dog. He was bleeding from the injuries Red-Moon had inflicted on him which were deep into his scared flesh.
Oh well, he thought as he examined first his body after awakening; there would be a few more scars to add to my collection. Vash ignored his grueling pains and attempted to search for the metal fragment that had broken off of the illuminate statue. He didn’t know why it was so important he just intuitively knew it was, it looked like just another piece of trash in a hundred foot cylinder of it. But somehow he felt drawn to it like it was glowing in a pale deep purple light as he dug through the refuse and the garbage.
Vash found the slender splinter of smooth cold metal and new right away that the inch long metal toothpick possessed some kind of strong magic it seemed to glow if Vash looked at it out of the corner of his eye. It seemed enchanting; it lured him in with its beauty and aura. He didn’t know how to explain it but he felt like he wanted to possess and keep the shard for himself and in the back of his mind in a real deep animal side of his mind he would fight and kill anyone who tried to take it from him.
Vash shook his head to relieve the alien and disturbing sensation from his mind as the sword shard tried to enrapture him in its piercing domination. Vash found it strange that the piece of sword had such a strong evil taint that had just tried to possess him and captivate him in some kind of trace-like gaze. No wonder the statue was the prized artifact of the Sovereign museum the statue itself was now drawing in the crowds but it was the shard itself. It had an immediate alluring and tangible otherworldly pull on his mind, it was absolutely seductive.
Suddenly the shard began to glow and the purple glow grew brighter and brighter until it consumed him and consumed the expanse of the refuse hold of the trash ship around him in a blinding purple-white light activated by some deep magic that lay innate inside the sword for hundreds of years. Everything turned to white light as Vash suddenly found himself in another time and place all together as if he were having some kind of hallucinogenic magical vision in the confines of the ship, “What the hell…”
Vash suddenly saw visions of rolling flame and living fire, poor non industrial villages of straw and logs being burned down at the wrath of many war lords using the shards of the sword to increase their own demonic driven powers and their own lust for vengeance and destruction. He saw evil necromancers using the shards to make themselves immortal using the shards to make elixirs of immortality to extend an already unnatural lifespan. He saw death and suffering to innocent victims of the shards power, men who were turned into murderers and warriors who turned into fiends.
All at once he saw countless tales of suffering and countless tales of men and women being corrupted seduced and destroyed by the swords dark and powerful influence of great magic and dark power. The Sword spoke to him then, in a coarse and old creaky voice that spoke with rust filled breath, “You will see Redeemer how powerful I am and how powerful you can become with my help.” It was just a flash of sorts a sudden eruption of hallucinogenic flame, once the vision was over the fire seemed to return to within the shard of the sword.
“Definitely not visions of sugar plums dancing in my head…” Vash mused as the vision ended. What was that? Vash thought he must have hit his head a little too hard. But on a day like today I’m willing to count the possibilities as possible themselves. But none of this made sense what was this mysterious sword shard he now possessed? And why did a guy like him suddenly come to possess it? Destiny he didn’t have any damned destiny; the only destiny he had after this night was to drink ten bottles of Marquise Zahn and hope to live to tell the tale.
He held his head in his hands his entire brain was splitting in more ways than one, he felt like he had just taken a ten hour slip ride at to the forbidden lands beyond all of the charted continents. What did all of this mean? For a moment he wanted desperately to know all of the answers, but each question answered opened a million more of them, “Gods Almighty,” he said his vision a blur and his thoughts a mush, “When this damned job is over I’m going to do one thing and one thing only: get laid.”
But then he could not begin to worry about his splitting head and his ringing mind, the yellow siren lights of the trash receptacle started to flash and buzz with a blaring cacophony of light and sound. Oh great… Vash thought to himself as he then knew that the trash ship had reached beyond the city complex walls and had reached their destination of the dumping grounds outside of the farthest reaches of the outer city, It was a dreadful noise and a noise that meant one thing, “Your ass is about to be dropped” Not good, Vash mused to himself.
The titanic trash delivery ship’s magical levitation coils stopped their movement and hovered like a crude metallic zeppelin over the waste dumping and recycling grounds outside the massive city. The bulking gears of the freighter raked across each other and let out steam out of its smoke stacks as it churned more magical incarnum power and steam power into the trash receptacles that Vash was currently in. the mirage that went like ribbons of ink all over the bottom of the ship which magically kept the giant hunk of steel and brass afloat in the sky stared to buzz and decent to a the spot where the Skavin refuse masters would dump their cargo, Vash included.
“No, No, No…” Vash cried out futilely trying to grasp onto something solid that would keep him from becoming garbage himself as he would if he ended up dead, “I did not have to fight a psychotic werewolf samurai and escape scythe to die like a sack of potato peals. I don’t care what Priestess Shara at the orphanage said I’m not going to die like the trash I am! I’m not going to die not especially since it would be a rather ironic death! To hell with that old hag nun I’m not going to prove her right!” he seemed to plead to himself thought no one would hear him.
The steam powered leviathan of an airship started to open its massive circular refuse doors that emptied out its cargo of garbage onto the massive piles of metal sythapalst, and other garbage of a hundred years of collection of refuse of a billion citizens of Xion. Vash looked down and saw the endless fields of garbage below him. As the doors opened the garbage began to fall out of the massive airship and tumble onto the miles and miles of mounds of garbage.
Vash tumbled with the refuse and cardboard and scarps of metal and for the second time in a single day he was free falling to an unnaturally young death which he could do nothing about, he tumbled out of the airship and tried to maneuver his fall to avoid death. He fell downward and said, “When this is over I’m going to have a serious talk with my luck!” and then he prayed to which ever god that smiled on outlaws to help him cheat the reaper as third time in one day. Then everything went black as he hit the trash…again.